Kosovo Backlash

One of my political heros, Patrick J. Buchanan, has an article on the idiocy of American intervention in Serbia/Kosovo and its varied consequences:

In the spring 1999, the United States bombed Serbia for 78 days to force its army out of that nation’s cradle province of Kosovo. The Serbs were fighting Albanian separatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA. And we had no more right to bomb Belgrade than the Royal Navy would have had to bombard New York in our Civil War.

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On Sunday [February 17], Kosovo declared independence and was recognized by the European Union and President Bush. But this is not the end of the story. It is only the preface to a new history of the Balkans, a region that has known too much history.By intervening in a civil war to aid the secession of an ancient province, to create a new nation that has never before existed and, to erect it along ethnic, religious and tribal lines, we have established a dangerous precedent.

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By intervening in a civil war where no vital interest was at risk, the United States, which is being denounced as loudly in Belgrade today as we are being cheered in Pristina, has acquired another dependency.

Forgive me for being ominous, but I think we are now beginning to see the backlash from our intervention in the Serbian/Kosovo war. Our intervention was an unwise adventure into a regional and political conflict which should have been the purview of our European allies. We have had U.S. forces in Kosovo since 1999 and will be forced to remain even longer with the likelihood of renewed hostilites.

The worst aspect of this, however, is that the United States has again circumvented the United Nations in favor of unilateral action. Kosovo would have been less likely to make their own unilateral decision that has resulted in continued regional instability if the U.S. had not given its encouragment.

The merits of independence for Kosovo may be valid, but independence will not prove valuable if done out of a sense of nationalism and provocation. I hope and pray that cooler heads are able to prevail and there is not a resumption of war in the region. I also hope Kosovo will use this as an opportunity for subsidiarity and local governance and reject the KLA's militaristic call for a "Greater Albania."

Mason Slidell